Boring myself with Buncombe County’s new DHHS billing guide, I see, glaringly, that family planning is a very special service:

  • It is exempt from collection notices and conferences,
  • It has no residency requirement,
  • It has a special sliding fee schedule that is lower than that for other DHHS offerings,
  • It may be provided even if the applicant has an outstanding balance with the department,
  • It may be provided for free with the approval of the Clinical Services Supervisor,
  • It may be provided on a sliding scale even if the applicant misrepresents personal information to a degree that would disqualify them from other DHHS offerings, and, most importantly,
  • A teenager requesting confidential family planning will be considered as a family of one in her income assessment.

If these enticements don’t induce you to get pregnant out of wedlock, you might consider sharing needles. Persons seeking STD treatments enjoy a few, but not all, of the same benefits.